No matter who sez it to you? No matter how many times you've heard it before and it never came true as "they" told you it would? Why do words comfort when the action is unknown? Faith? Hope? Desperation? We hear all the time that God will provide. Yet people suffer and die all the time. Why doesn't God provide for them? Do you believe anything you hear no matter the source?
I can only trust someone who I consider to be trustworthy (worthy of my trust).
Words comfort because they help ease worry. No one knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Not even what will happen in the next hour. Sure we can guess, but we don't know exactly what will happen. That produces worry. The more we worry about something the more anxious we become. And anxiety can cause all sorts of problems - mentally and physically. Have you ever noticed that when we worry about something our minds (inner-voice) likes to concentrate on the worst case scenario? Comforting words can help us not believe those scenarios our "inner-voice" tells us. By the way, have you also noticed that the eventual outcome of what we were worrying about is almost never as bad as we worried it would be?
Faith is a complete trust in someone or something. When you walk into a room and flip the light switch, you don't "hope" the light will come on, you simply expect it to happen. That's faith. You may not know how it happens (electricity, wires, circuits, electrons, positive/negative, etc.), you simply have faith that it will.
You say that because people suffer and die, it means God doesn't provide for them. How so? Is it not God who puts the fruit on the trees for us to eat? Is it not God who sends the rain and snow to water the earth? God doesn't simply hand people things on a silver platter, He expects them to do their part too. He puts the fruit on the trees, but we have to harvest and eat that fruit. It doesn't matter if one believes in Him or not, He still provides for them. Suffering isn't enjoyable. People normally don't want to suffer. Some suffering is caused by people. God provides medications (one way or another), but if certain people over-inflate the price of a medication so that those who need it cant afford it and die as a result, whose fault is that?
No, I don't believe everything I hear. That would be foolish. When I hear something, I not only consider the source, but I also compare it to what I already know. Even those I trust aren't always right. However, I would put more faith in something from someone I do trust than I would from someone who I didn't trust.
Shuhak 